We all wish Happy New Year to everyone every year. This is just our autonomous system in action. We don’t do anything to make it a happy year either for the self or for the others.

Action must be taken, the course of the life must be altered and the dream must be pursued. Then and then the New Year and life ahead will become happy. Here I present one book everyone must read before doing any professional and vocational activities in the new year. The new year resolution number one.

The Art of Work, the proven path to discovering what you were meant to do by a young writer Jeff Goins is the book.

The author writes in the introduction: “Everyone, it seems, is searching for a purpose, for something to satisfy their deepest desires. I believe that “something” is calling. …. it is the reason you were born.”

A calling is not some carefully crafted plan. It’s what’s left when the plan goes horribly wrong.

A calling is that thing that you can’t not do, an answer to the age-old question,’ what should I do with my life.” Everywhere you look, people are giving excuses for not pursuing what they were born to do. We’ve accepted our lot in life. It is what it is. Even though we do our best to embrace reality, we are restless. What comfort do we have other than the vague notion that we are not alone?

The author is giving a big jolt to out status quoist comfort and wrong notions. He says, “there is a more to a life that what happens to you and more to a vocation than punching a clock.”

He is sharing several real-life stories of people who have followed their calling in spite of several hurdles and challenges. The entire book is filled with high inspiring stories. The most interesting chapter I found was the 6th Chapter of Portfolio Life.

Here he talks about the new way of life of the present generation of workforce irrespective of the age.

By 2020, 40 to 50% of the American workforce will be freelancers. By 2030 it will be a majority. People are not robots, programmed to do one thing. We are multifaceted creatures with many, varied interests.

What surprised me, though is, how many people have it who found their calling through a portfolio of work. They didn’t do just one thing but instead embraced a diverse set of activities that formed a complete identity. This is the way the world works now, and maybe the way it’s supposed to work.

Portfolio life is inevitable. We are not what we do for a living, but our life is made up of what we do. There are five different types of work that makeup of your portfolio:

• Fee work, trading hours for fees
• Salary work, fixed income-based job description
• Homework, work you do at home. Homework and spending time with the family
• Study work, intentional education that contributes to any work you do in the future
• Gift work, any volunteer experience you might do.

He is quoting the British writer Dorothy Sayers,” Wealth may come. Fame too. But those are not our goal. Our job is to see the work as a means of making us better, not just richer, people.”

“Don’t search for your calling. Explore, try new things, keep your feet moving. Something will grab you. It will call on you. It is no different than falling in love.”

Portfolio life is a life with multiple things we do at a time. Life will end on one go. All our dreams, passions, calling, the duty also must go on parallelly. Most people don’t find time for what they wanted to do and die with their song still in them (Oliver Wendell Holmes).

This is a highly inspirational book and will have a far-reaching impact on your life, vocation and whatever you do. The author concludes his book with; “Because in the end, success isn’t so much what you do with your life; it’s what you leave behind. Which may be what a calling is all about: leaving a legacy that matters.”

The agenda is not just Happy New Year but a happy new life. Learning from these real-life inspirational stories and living portfolio life you love is surely going to make your life ahead happier. Daydreaming and wishful thinking – Enough is enough.

Can’t wait to read, here is a link. The Art of Work.

(PS: The first thing to do on a New Year day is, of course, to pray to your God)

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